Welcome To Wherever You Are
by 99 In The Shade
Summary: Robbie Chase is still a newbie at PPTH – and he’s struggling to pull through, somehow. You see, having House as a boss doesn’t make things any easier…


Disclaimer:  
Not mine, not in the slightest. Unless you count seasons one to three on DVD. But that's probably only me counting, so… well, no mine, no sue, please!  
I'm just borrowing the characters and will return them without a scratch (as far as that's possible with them, that is) and squeaky clean… well, I guess you get the point.  
Not even the title's mine – "Welcome To Wherever You Are" rightfully belongs to Bon Jovi, I only borrowed that one as well.

Warnings:  
None, as far as I'm concerned – though my beta said you could read a bit of Chase/House into it. While I'm wholly in favor of that concept (aka I'm a total and hopeless slashaholic), I wouldn't have noticed it if my beta hadn't told me so…  
Anyways, it comes down to this: all harmless fun! (Unless you wanna let your overactive imagination have a go at it, of course…)

Author's Nonsensical Waffling – the obligatory a/n:

Four little thingies before you proceed to the fic:

One: English's not my native language – so keep any mistakes you can (hopefully not…) find and pin them to your walls or do whatever with them…  
Two: This is my very first attempt at fanfiction – so please be gentle with the criticism…  
Three: Don't try to make any sense of the symptoms; I picked them (for lack of any medical knowledge) totally at random.  
Four: Enjoy yourselves!

* * *

Thud-thud.

Thud-thud.

Something bouncing off a hard surface – presumably a wall. Time and time again.  
It's been going on for some time now. To him, it seems like hours; in reality it's much more likely to have been fifteen minutes at best.

It's incredibly annoying. Disrupts his thoughts and is likely to make him go crazy.  
He'd really _love_ to have a go at who- or whatever is causing the thudding.  
Only that he can't, the cause being unknown and unlikely to be figured out any time soon.

Even worse, there's no escaping, no leaving the office; in case their patient needs immediate attention, they need to stay put.  
Or rather, one of them needs to stay and, out of three fellows, he's drawn the short straw.  
No surprise there, he is, after all, the new guy.

His colleagues have warned him to expect times like these when all they do is wait.

Wait for their boss to come up with "a highly unlikely and totally insane yet miraculously accurate diagnosis and a rather dangerous treatment for said condition" as one of his colleagues put it, accompanied by a knowing smirk from the redhead, the third doc in Diagnostics.  
He wouldn't know since he's been hired only a week ago and this is his first case.

Middle aged man named Torres, presenting with diarrhea, respiratory distress, a rather severe headache (he'd claimed) and low BP.  
An MRI, CT, several blood scans and an inconclusive lumbar puncture later, they still aren't any the wiser.  
"They" being Diagnostic's fellows or, as House prefers to call them, the "ducklings".  
One of these days, he's going to ask his colleagues where that one comes from.  
Once he's managed not to forget their names, that is. But they've only told him about ten times so far, so it's nothing grave, really.  
Hell, he's much too busy remembering how to get to his destination without getting lost several times and is much too terrified of just about everyone (which includes the nurses).  
Not to forget doing House's clinic duty whenever his boss feels like making him do it.

House, he can remember.  
There is just no forgetting him – even if the man wasn't a legend, a mastermind and world-renowned diagnostician.  
He's a misanthropic jerk.  
Addicted to painkillers, endlessly mocking him for his looks and his accent. He can practically hear the uncalled-for remarks – House addressing him as "pretty boy" and all that jazz.  
Calling him British when he should know perfectly well he's Australian.  
Throw in some "down under" jokes and the picture's about complete.  
He already has enough material for several harassment suits after that short a time – but he isn't too keen on losing his job after less than a month.  
It would only prove his father right – that he couldn't get things right on his own and that he'd be better off returning to Oz and working with famous Dr. Rowan Chase and one day following in his footsteps.

He shakes his head, not too eager to follow that particular train of thought right now.

Thud-thud.

It hasn't stopped – but then what did he expect, a miracle?  
Getting a break?  
Go figure.

If only it stopped – maybe he could concentrate on trying to come up with a decent idea then. With the current state of affairs, it's close to impossible to focus on anything more complicated than some tabloid crossword and to him, those are more of a test to see if the pen still works.  
And even that he didn't manage without some mistakes when he usually doesn't have too much trouble with the hard ones.  
Now he's run out of them completely – and this means no more distraction from the wait and the resulting boredom.  
Which is almost too much to bear and certainly not what he applied for.

Maybe the case can help him to kill time till something happens.  
He doesn't really expect anything to come out of it, though, being at his wit's end. Only what else is there left to do? Count the holes in the ceiling? No thanks, he isn't totally desperate yet!  
The symptoms are on the whiteboard, along with possible diagnoses they have ruled out and therefore crossed out already.  
Things are beginning to look pretty bad for Mr. Torres if they don't come up with anything soon.  
His kidneys are getting worse by the hour – and he's seen enough patients on dialysis to know it rather gets in the way of an ordinary life.  
He doesn't want Mr. Torres to have to deal with that. Or anybody else, for that matter.

If only House – who's said to be THE diagnostician to turn to in hopeless cases – had an idea or was working with them on a diagnosis!  
Only that's wishful thinking as the man isn't to be seen anywhere near this office.

He could always go look for him and ask for his opinion on an idea – only he'd need to have one (and it better be good) to go pester House.  
If he didn't present a decent reason, things would be bound to turn a somewhat ugly shade of nasty for him – and House treats him caustically enough as it is.  
No need to give him extra ammo.

Stretching his legs, however, sounds like a reasonable idea.  
He knows he's to stay – but five minutes surely won't hurt anybody, will they?  
Walk about a bit; maybe get something to eat, help his unconscious come up with something good.  
Not to forget escaping the perpetual thudding which is still as present and annoying as it was when it first started.  
Maybe even more so.

He makes sure he's got his pager on him before exiting the office – new development's not too likely but if working ICU has taught him anything it's never to leave the pager behind in case there is an emergency.

As he makes for the lobby, he passes House's seemingly deserted office.  
Perceiving motion out of the corner of his eye makes him stop mid-step.

He takes a closer look – there's a hunched figure sitting in a corner, throwing something against the wall. A ball, too big to be a tennis ball, but not big enough for a football.  
There it is, the reason for the ongoing thudding.

He's strongly reminded of that movie with Steve McQueen in it, "The Great Escape" he thinks it's called.  
POWs trying to escape their captors. McQueen in an isolated cell after each failed attempt, playing with a baseball exactly like the person's doing it right now.

He's never thought of House's taste in movies before – but it fits extraordinarily well.  
For the figure playing with the ball can't be anyone but his boss.

He smiles and walks on, strangely reassured by the idea that House appears to be an ordinary mortal also – something he's doubted several times this week.

When he kicks the vending machine which refuses to relinquish his much needed (and paid for) candy bar, he realizes that there's not that big a difference between Austin Hospital and Princeton-Plainsboro besides their being on different ends of the world – but that's exactly what made him send in his application.

When – against all odds – his pager goes off (making him jump in the process, he just isn't accustomed to emergencies any more…), it feels just like back home.

Apparently House has had an inspiration, since the display reads to come to the patient's room ASAP. With a sigh he lets the vending machine be (keeping his chocolate, the bloody thing) and makes for the third floor, wondering what kind of grilling House has in stock for him.

* * *

IMPORTANT NOTE – since a) this nice page (which won't show its name in here) won't always show the "complete" as status and b) my reviewers (thanks very much, btw, I'm just very lazy/slow when it comes to replying) all expect an update:

This is strictly a one-shot! I'm NOT planning on any further chapters.  
Yes, I know, it's got an open end and the case isn't solved – but that's the way I wanted it to be. Besides: I'd need to know the disease the patient of the week is suffering from – and I don't have the slightest clue, as I mentioned already.


End file.
